How you can group your applications for App Volumes

Because it's best practice to not have more than 10 AppStacks attached per target system, you need to group your applications. At the customer* where I'm working we grouped the applications by using a "Funnel" and dividing them into 3 different kinds of AppStacks, as you can see in the picture below. *We use Horizon View 7.5, Instant Clones with Windows 10, App Volumes 2.14.2 and VMware User Environment Manager (UEM) 9.4. The first one we use is a "All-users AppStack". This AppStack contains general used applications and this AppStack is attached during computer startup. Which…continue reading →

Create a custom writeable volume for specifically the Outlook OST and Search Indexes

In my previous post I covered how VMware UEM can redirect the OST file and Search Indexes to a User Installed Application (UIA) writable volume. Because it's still a UIA writable volume, any user with administrative rights can (ab)use these rights and install any application onto his/her own writable volume or the writable volume of another user for when they for example try to solve an incident in a quick and dirty way. In my case I've seen this (ab)use of the administrative rights a bit too much, so I came up with…continue reading →

App Volumes and OST files

With the release of App Volumes 2.14 VMware now supports Cached Exchange Mode and Windows Search Indexing on writable volumes. This means that when you use a User Installed Applications (UIA) only writable volume, the Microsoft Outlook and Windows Search indexes are now saved along with the Outlook OST file to the user's Writable Volume if you have this configured in your User Environment Manager Console. When you use a writable volume with User Installed Applications (UIA) plus User Profile, no UEM configuration is needed because it saves the complete user profile on the writeable…continue reading →

Create and size a new AppStack template

Wether your working in a small or large environment, storage space is something that you have to take into account. The standard size of templates for AppStacks and Writable Volumes are 20 and 10GB. When the applications you want to deliver to the desktops don't require more than 2 or 5GB, why use a template with the size of 20GB? In this blog I will guide you in how to create a new AppStack template and change it to the size you need for your environment. Before we go into depth, make sure…continue reading →

Synchronize AppStacks in a multi-site deployment

At my customer we recently installed App Volumes 2.14 in a in a multi-site deployment. Because the vSAN storages on both sites can't directly communicate with each other, we need to set up storage replication to synchronize the AppStacks. In this blog I will cover how to configure Storage Groups in the App Volumes Manager. To setup storage replication between the two sites, a 'non-attached' datastore need to be created to act as a man in the middle. A 'non-attached' datastore means that it's a place where AppStacks can be located, but those AppStacks will…continue reading →

VMware App Volumes 2.14

2 days ago, on May 29th, VMware released the newest version of App Volumes, version 2.14. In this blog I will cover some of the new and exiting features such as Role-Based Access Control and Backup, Restore and Move Writable Volumes with more depth and my personal opinion. Role-Based Access Control I've been waiting a while for this option because I see roles for different kinds of expertise, but I don't want to give them the possibility to view and adjust every setting in the App Volumes Manager. For example, I would like to…continue reading →

Install and configure VMware App Volumes Manager

VMware App Volumes provides a system to deliver applications to desktops through virtual disks. Applications are bundled in AppStacks and delivered by attaching a standard VMDK file to a virtual machine. Applications delivered by using App Volumes look and feel natively installed and you can update or replace the applications in real-time. You can centrally manage the applications with the App Volumes Manager and there is no need to modify the desktops or individual applications. In this guide I will show you how to install and configure the App Volumes Manager.   System Requirements Ensure that…continue reading →

VMware App Volumes – How to AppStack

What the App Volumes? Over the past months I took a deep-dive into VMware App Volumes and this made me really exited about the future of Application Virtualization. VMware App Volumes, in a nutshell, is a virtualization product that provides just-in-time application delivery to virtualized desktop environments. With this real-time application delivery system, applications are delivered to virtual desktops through AppStacks, without modifying the VM or applications themselves. AppStacks are VMDK virtual disks that contain one or more applications that can be assigned to a users depending on how the applications are managed. In this article I will…continue reading →

VMware App Volumes – Provision an Appstack

In the previous part we've created an AppStack. Now it's time to provision the AppStack to the provisioning machine. Before we do this, I want to explain something about this machine and the best practices I use. An provisioning machine is a virtual machine used to provision AppStacks. Once an AppStack is provisioned you are able to capture the desired applications and complete the provisioning process. If you are familiar with application virtualization like VMware ThinApp or Microsoft App-V a lot of this information and best practices can be re-used in order to successfully provision an…continue reading →

VMware App Volumes – Capture an Application

When you provisioned the AppStack to the provisioning machine, vCenter will attach the VDMK to the machine and the machine will be set into provisioning mode. The VMDK attached to the machine is a writeable volume wich will be set to read-only when the provisioning is completed. Everything installed or changed will be detected by the App Volumes Agent and captured in the AppStack. One of the things I got exited about is the virtualization of drivers (Note: Kernel drivers cannot be virtiualized). When I was packaging with Microsoft App-V, I always had to think of…continue reading →